Datacenter and corporate clients have recently moved to adjust their NAND flash inventory in response to component shortages and global economic downturns, although demand for SSD is bound to surge in the medium and long term to support continuous digital transformation at businesses, according to Kioxia, a Japan-based NAND flash and SSD maker.

Chipmakers have kicked off shipments for the upcoming iPhones slated for launch in September, but uncertainty remains whether the shipments will continue to see strong momentum between the end of the fourth quarter and the beginning of first-quarter 2023, according to sources at IC backend houses.

As SoftBank posted a record JPY3.16 trillion (US$23.5 billion) loss in Q1FY22, prompting it to offload half of its holdings in the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Its subsidiary Arm posted record revenue of US$719 million in Q1FY22. Significantly, the silicon IP company’s quarterly royalty revenue grew by 22%, reaching US$453 million.

Samsung Electronics has minimized the hinge mechanism in its newly unveiled foldable smartphones to cut production costs and make them slimmer and lighter, and other vendors including Huawei are all moving to follow suit, a development likely to affect the shipments of components suppliers, according to industry sources.